Morning

Arriving at the wall at 6:30 a.m. we could not believe our eyes: no soldiers for miles around. The Palestinians who came towards us were smiling and telling us happily "they have gone". We were checking the picture by walking to the mosque , crossing the muddy passage at Islamic university and going down to the mainroad. No soldiers. When we were already on the way to go to another checkpoint because this one did not seem to need us, taxi drivers adressed us, teilling that in the direction to Jerusalem at the Paz gasolin station the police had opened up another checking point. So we went there st 7 a.m..We found four border policemen having stopped already two service cars coming from Jerusalem on the way to Abu Dis because in each of them they had found one passenger whose papers they confiscated. One of them, a young guy, was from the Westbank and the other one from Jerusalem, but without Jerusalem ID. He told us, he was married to am Israeli and that he had a paper which determined his citicenship, but this was not recognized. These 2 men had to wait more than an hour until the police arrested them and drove them away. We gave them the Moked cards. The one from Jerusalem was during this time bodychecked twice, the other one once. Two of the policemen had to write a report about the confiscation of the cars. This took them more than an hour. Another one was friendly but high. While the drivers were waiting one of them got a phone call. So he spoke. The fourth policeman forbid him to phone, explaining" here is not allowed to phone, to smoke, to eat, just to drink." The Palestinian shouted at him, but this policeman stayed friendly.After a while another jeep was arriving with a cool young commander. He was politely explaining to us, that there would be a law which prescribes to confiscate a service car, if one of the passengers would be illegal.SummaryNo police or soldiers at the Abu Dis wall, but continuation of holding and confiscating service cars with "Illegal" passengers. This seems to ge a greater program. The legal basis should be checked. Where in the world has a taxi driver to check the papaes of his passenger? And where would be his authorization?